As I mentioned previously, I’ve recently been considering the purchase of a MacBook.  Well, it didn’t take long – I’ve taken the plunge.  I decided to buy from Amazon.com, instead of directly from apply for a number of reasons:

• I trust Amazon.com.  That’s not to say that they haven’t let me down on occasion, but as a general rule, they can be counted on.
• They are offering a $100 rebate.
• They are offering 24 months no interest with the Amazon card.
• No sales tax.

I know that the first question that I will get from Rob when he shows up this morning is a big fat “Why?”.  Well, I’ve always been a bit of a closet Apple fanboy.  My first programming experience was in grade school with Logo on an Apple II.  My first programming book was an Apple programming book that I bought at the school book fair (if you want to know the truth, I bought the book because some of the examples had limericks which my 5^th grade self could not resist – I actually had no computer at the time and my parents flipped out for wasting money.)  I also live in a three iPod house.  My 1 year old has her own iPod loaded with her custom play lists of lullaby music. 

The last time I flirted with purchasing a Mac was when the Mac Mini came out.  I passed at that point because it didn’t seem practical.  I was looking for a cheap way to get my hands on a Mac OS X device so that I could test the waters.  In the end, I figured that it wouldn’t get much use if it had to compete for resources (keyboard, monitor, etc.) with my primary box.  The laptop form factor makes much more sense for what I’m looking to do with it.  The fact that I can run windows on it is another bonus.  Worst case it becomes a very cool looking windows box.

I also had it ingrained in my psyche that Apple == expensive.  It turns out that the MacBook is reasonably affordable.  Starting at $1099.  $1499 ($1399 from Amazon) nicely equipped.  I’m looking forward to bloging my experiences.  I probably won’t do a big “unboxing” post – that’s been over done.

Today I attended the Cleveland Day of .Net.  Well, to be more accurate, I attended the first half, leaving during lunch to head home.  The three talks I made it to were really very good.

Joe O'Brien started the day with a good introduction to Ruby.  I had seen ruby a little bit while looking at rails for my current work project, but his talk really made things gel a little bit.  Also, the insight into how IronRuby is being developed was quite interesting.

The second talk, was Alan Stevens presentation on TDD.  He used the ASP.NET MVC as part of the demonstrations - something which I am very interested in and would have been the technology of choice for my work project if it was released.  Again, I've read quite a bit about TDD in the past, but Alan helped the concepts to gel.  He is a very dynamic speaker, and if you have a chance to catch one of his talks, you should make sure to attend.

Finally, Nate Kohari gave a talk about something that was almost completely new to me - Dependency Injection/Inversion of Control with Ninject.  Nate did a great job.  I wouldn't have guessed that this was his first talk in front of a large group.  He kept the attention of the audience, finished right on time and completely kept his cool when the projector broke down mid-way through the talk.  Interesting to note - it was Alan who "refactored" the power connection to the projector on the fly and got it back up and running without blowing the bulb.  When I got home, I downloaded the Ninject bits and spent a few hours getting it to work in some of the unit tests that I'm working on for my day job.  So, in an ironic turn of events, Nate may be working for Merge again, just without getting paid for it :)  I have a long way to go before I grok Ninject, but I'm looking forward to giving it a go, and having fun blogging about it along the way.

One of the most surprising thing to see at a .Net conference was that all three of these speakers gave their presentations with MacBooks.  Seeing Vista and Leopard running on a sleek black MacBook got my juices flowing and now I'm very close to buying one of my own.  I just have to have what all the cool kids have.

So (a needle pulling thread), it seems that my previous post didn't meet the spirit or the letter of the law for the Rules of the blog challenge 08.  Well, the rules suck.  Here's why:  I don't think I should have to post every day if I don't want to.  I should be able to write a freaking huge post once a week and have that count.  Anyway - in protest, I am blogging today's entry about how the rules suck and in doing so comply with them.

I'm falling behind in the challenge and need to post something.

W00t

This evening, I was talking to Nate on Twitter about TiVos.  I thought it would be a good excuse to document some of my thoughts and experiences.

First of all - I have tried the Cable Company DVRs - last summer I was on a waiting list for 3 months for a unit to become available and once it arrived, I ran it for approximately 3 days before unplugging it.  I've tried software DVRs - Media Center as well as Beyond TV.  Simply said, nothing touches TiVo.  Not even close.  I've missed a total of two shows over the past 5 years due to glitches - another couple before I got the hang of adding an hour to recordings on Sunday evenings on the station that carries the NFL games.  With the volume of TV I watch, that isn't bad at all.  I get very very few duplicates, thanks to TiVos smarts of not recording an episode that has been recorded during the past 28 days.

I recently added a 2nd TiVo to the house - a nice Series 3 that I got a good deal on as a refurb unit.  I was skeptical of purchasing a refurb unit and with good reason - the first unit that they sent had a faulty OLED display and had to be sent back.  TiVos customer service was incredibly professional and helpful.  They gave me the option of cross shipping, which I chose and got a very speedy refund when they received my exchange unit.  Getting the CableCARDs working was a bit of a challenge.  The first two truck rolls to my house resulted in only 1 functioning tuner, after which the local office refused to send anyone else.  I finally had to write a letter to the designated FCC complaint contact for Time Warner, which got the problem resolved in about a weeks time.  Since then, Time Warner has made several courtesy calls to make sure that I was still happy.

Here's the facts that you need to know if you're going to consider buying a TiVo.

• It will be more expensive.  You obviously have to purchase the unit, but you also have to pay a monthly fee of $12.95.  Your cable company will charge you a couple bucks a month for each CableCARD too.
• You may not get every channel you would get if you had cable company hardware.  Specifically, you need to watch out for HD channels on Switched Digital Video (SDV). This depends on the area - I've never run into it, but supposedly it is going to be more common as cable companies roll out more HD.  There is a hardware solution in the works in the form of a dongle, but it is not reality yet.
• On demand or PPV is not an option yet.  It may be in the future with the dongle, but dont hold your breath.  If this is important, you can always get a cable box for this purpose.
• Reasonably sized cable companies are required by the federal government to help you get CableCARDs.  You will read horror stories on the internet.  Be persistent.  Know your rights.  Do your homework and don't be fooled by the FUD and you will be fine.
• Check out Tivoblog and tivocommunity for all the information you could ever want.

IsTwitterDown.com

Today was patch day for World of Warcraft.  Now most people complain about patch day because it means extra downtime (and Blizzard, 3 weeks of extended downtime in a row?  Give me a break).  I dread patch day because it means several days of troubleshooting the addins that I have come to depend on.  Now, this process became much easier once I realized that MazzleUI was dead and switched to an a la cart plan, but still patch days are tough.

I wonder what the world would be like if Microsoft had the same attitude towards breaking changes in their APIs.  Sure, there would be a lot of pissed off people, but couldn't they move much quicker if they didn't have to worry quite so much about breaking applications?

So, I'm sitting down this evening to get a couple of things done, one of which is subscribing to a magazine that I'll need when I finally finish the basement remodel.  The subscription price is a very reasonable $12.97.  I fill out the form and when I get to the credit card information, I realize my wallet is across the room.  Now - I usually don't fall for the "bill me later" option when subscribing to a magazine.  If I don't pay for it now, I'm pretty sure that the invoice will get lost amongts all of the "we know you just subscribed, but this is your REALLY REALLY ABSOLUTELY FINAL OFFER TO RENEW AT THE GUARENTEED LOWEST PRICE IN THE HISTORY OF LOWEST PRICES" post cards.  The invoice will go unpaid and I'll be a bad periodical reading citizen.  But this time I decided to be a lazy shit, throw caution to the wind, and check the "bill me later" box.  Submit.

I'm greeted with a "WAIT!!!! You selected Bill Me Later" screen.  Ahh, catch time right?  They want me to pay extra for the bill me later option, right?  Nope.

They offer me an even lower price to pay with a credit card right now.  The $12.97 subscription is now offered for $10.97.  Now that got me off of my ass to get my wallet.

Sometimes being lazy pays off.  Time to go work out.

I'm planning on attending, assuming I can get domestic clearance.  My former colleague Nate Kohari will be speaking.  My former employer is a sponsor.  It should be interesting.

The ultimate developer tool guy, Scott Hanselman, hasn't been a Microsoft employee very long, but has already liberated an internal utility.  Very shiny.

I really hope this gets put on CodePlex.  It doesn't work well with regions.  I'd love the flexibility to dock it to the left of the code pane (since I already have ReSharper on the right).  It would be cool if it respected my custom color scheme.  I'm a dark background guy when it comes to coding and navigating with a black on white display is a little disconcerting.

But overall, it's a very cool idea with a lot of promise.  Keep up the good work - I know it is probably a very big pain to cut through the red tape to get something like that released.  It is very much appreciated!